Falling Into Shadows

Chocolate was my worst enemy and nightmare.

I envied the power it had over other people and loathed the temptation to indulge in it. The feeling wasn’t mutual on its part, but I knew that it enjoyed watching me squirm whenever it tried to trick me into taking one harmless bite. It would cackle, as I would quiver down in fear. It also found humor in prompting me of how many calories were in a small portion of it and knew that even the mere sight of it was enough to terrify me.

Ever since I was twelve years old, I refused to eat any more fragments of my enemy ever again because I could never stop eating it without overlooking the nonexistent guilt I had felt. But I had started to feel guilty for eating it on my eleventh birthday when my mother had customized a chocolate cake with my name printed on it elegantly.

I had eaten the first slice of the cake and had greedily wanted to eat more. I had watched as my parents and the guests of my birthday party had tried to mask their disgust in me for eating so much of the cake, but I could easily see behind all of their façades that they had all perceived me as a truly repulsive person. I had appalled all of them with my unladylike behavior and appearance. Their façades had suddenly made me feel guilty for consuming most of the cake and hardly leaving any for them to eat as well.

I remembered the aftermath of my eleventh birthday party and was glad that I could never erase it from my mind because it prompted me of my parents’ true nature. My parents had been disappointed in me, and they still were to this day, because I had embarrassed them in front of my peers, who were actually their guests rather than mine, for I had never known any of them nor were any of them my age at the time.

While I was still eleven years old, I had continued to feel guilty for what I had done without realizing it. But the guilt had eventually turned into my own personal remedy, which had then transformed into insecurity. I had discovered a cure to my guilt, which was binging in chocolate and other sinful sweets until I had satisfied my hunger, but I would always throw up whatever I had eaten without my parents’ notice.

I recalled the first time I had stuck two fingers down my throat until I had felt the urge to vomit the food I had consumed. I had felt disgusted with myself for always eating, but I could never prevent myself from eating. I had known that the only way I could eat without gaining any more weight was by continuing to purge. I didn’t want my parents to suspect that something was wrong, so I would always eat meals with them at the dinner table and throw up whatever I had eaten in my private bathroom.

It had taken only a year for this process to develop and shatter my perspectives of myself, but it had made me never look at chocolate in the same way ever again. The sedation of chocolate never continued to cure my body because it scarred only the façade that others saw and trapped the skinny person I was on the inside.

The guilt had never subsided, but I had eventually come to a point where I truly didn’t care if I had humiliated my parents because they had begun to neglect me freely without showing any guilt of their own. They wouldn’t acknowledge my presence at the dinner table anymore or realize that I was home from school. They wouldn’t ask how my day at school was or if I had needed any help on a school assignment. They couldn’t see that not everything was perfect and lovely.

When I was twelve years old, I had decided to experiment on whether or not my parents would see if I was dining with them. I had skipped my very first meal and locked myself in my room for the rest of the evening. The results were predictable, and the next morning, I wasn’t surprised that my parents hadn’t said anything of my absence at the dinner table. The only thing they had said to me was that they were going on a business trip that night before they had dismissed me from the kitchen. They hadn’t even said goodbye to me or informed me that they would be gone for three weeks. They had left me alone in our house with the maids who were my only friends at the time.

As the years elapsed, and I entered my teenage years, bulimia nervosa was no longer a part of my life, for I had discovered the power of not eating meals and the advantages of not purging food. I always felt disgusted after I vomited and thought that starving was the new cure to feeling alleviated from the repulsion of myself. I wouldn’t starve myself every day, but I would deprive myself of food for the first two days of each month and skip dinner every few weeks. I would always count the amount of calories in each meal I was given and record the total number of calories I consumed each day.

I wasn’t sure if my parents ever noticed the change in attitude of their daughter, but I had begun to feel aversion towards my parents and not care about protecting their precious image. When I was fourteen, I had felt rebellious towards them and had yearned for my freedom. I was tired of always listening to my parents’ ridiculous instructions and fulfilling every single one of them without any tantrums.

I remembered when I was younger, I would allow my mother to pick out my clothes and determine what my outfit would be for the next day. My father had full permission to decide how long I could watch television and when I could go outside. I had never rebelled against them or defied their stringent rules, but that was when I was a mundane girl who never understood what the word ‘lovely’ meant or how to have others define you as such.

I was truly ordinary with no unique characteristics and was never a talented person. I had mediocre grades and artistic abilities. I was terrible at sports and had stage fright, so I could never memorize the lines of the lead role of my school’s plays. The only thing I was good at was dieting, and I refused to let go of something I could excel at without the temptation to quit.

When I had entered my freshman year of high school, I had met a group of girls who were beautiful and skinny. I had soon found out that they were also dieting and trying to lose weight when they were already perfect. They had learned that I yearned to look thin and lovely as well, so they had allowed me to join their clique.

We all had soon become close friends, and they treated me as if I was always in their exclusive group and belonged there. They had even given me a small notepad, which had a rhinestone encrusted “A” on the thick cover of it, so I could record the number of calories I consumed each day. I always treasured their generous gift to me and truly felt accepted for once in my life.

On October 31 of my freshman year, my friends had decided to start a contest that would begin on the first day of November. They had wanted to see who could consume the least amount of calories in a month and thought that it would be exhilarating to race each other in their own personal competition. Their contest had immediately intrigued me, and I didn’t hesitate to join in on their fun.

The leader of our group, Jessica, had explained to us the rules of our competition during lunch. She had said, “The rules are simple. The less food you eat, the fewer calories you will consume. Whoever has the least intake of calories in a month will be the skinniest of us all, and we will look up to her with admiration. But this doesn’t mean that our dieting days are over; this contest is purely for fun and is held to challenge ourselves to eat less than we normally do, so we can lose weight as we innocuously compete against each other.”

Jessica and a girl named Peyton had taken this competition much more seriously than the others had, but no one had decided to drop out because almost everyone, including me, was too persistent and stubborn to quit. Almost none of us had ever eaten lunch during the course of the contest, but some would snicker at the sight of seeing other competitors eat an apple or a granola bar. I, on the other hand, had never laughed at their lack of persistence, but I had secretly been happy inside that they were consuming calories because they were subconsciously helping me become closer to winning.

The month had passed by, and we had all informed each other of the number of calories we had consumed. My total intake had came out as 27,047 calories, which was a frightening number to look at if I hadn’t reminded myself that it was consumed throughout the course of one month. Unfortunately, I hadn’t won the contest, and my best friend, Lindsey, was the skinniest of us all. I was happy for her because that was what best friends were supposed to do, but I had tried to conceal the disappointment in myself for both of our sakes. She had inspired me to do better the next time, and I considered her as one of my new role models.

Freshman year had elapsed, and I began my sophomore year of high school with the same group of friends who continued to diet and encouraged others to do so as well. I never stopped dieting nor did I ever feel the temptation to quit. I could never bring myself to give up something I enjoyed doing because it would be depriving myself of genuine joy and a chance at success. The day I would stop dieting would be the day I became a failure.

And I, Annabelle Emerson, refused to become a failure.